Tag: Harbor

I just read Baudelaire’s Le Port and I found it so beautiful I wanted to try my hand at a translation. I took some liberties with the precise contents of the prose to bring out the prosody, the poetics of the rhythms—the rocking of sound waves echoing the waters that enraptured him so.

A harbor is a bewitching place for an old soul, worn out by life’s struggles. The sweep of sky, the swerving cloud-structures, the wash of shimmering colors, the blinking of the lighthouses—it’s a wonderful prism, just fit for watching the world without wearying the eyes. Feeding the taste of the soul for rhythm and beauty are the svelte shapes of boats with complex rigging, rocking up and down in harmony with the waves. And above all, for those who have long lost all curiosity or ambition, a mysterious kind of aristocratic relish is to lie in a belvedere or lean on a jetty and ruminate on all the activity of those who are coming and going, still possessing the power to want, to want to travel or grow richer.